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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210250">dreamt i was dead (still trying to wake up)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/presumenothing'>presumenothing (justjoy)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>fma fics [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(in the loosest sense of the word), (mentions of both Als and Noah but this is very much Ed-centric), Canon Compliant, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Character Study, Drabble Collection, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:54:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/presumenothing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>#01: <em>Why don’t you go somewhere else, if seeing all our faces hurts you that much?</em> Alfons asks him once, after what felt like the hundredth time he’d forgotten not to blanch on seeing Gracia. <em>And don’t say it doesn’t – god knows you’re no open book but I can read that much just fine, Edward, I’m not an idiot.</em></p>
<p>#02: He’s not the person Al made him out to be, nor the brother Al had forgotten for two years… but then again Ed barely can say who he <em>is</em> sometimes, these days, so maybe that’s just par for the course.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Twenty views on Ed, before and after Shamballa.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>fma fics [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dreamt i was dead (still trying to wake up)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/gifts">anthrop</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiryyGray/gifts">SiryyGray</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>inaugural 03 fic hoo boy!! </p>
<p>anyway this goes out to @anthrop and @liathgray, who are summarily the reason why i stuck with 03 long enough to reach CoS and promptly proceed to lose my absolute shit over it. the result of that being this, which… may potentially make no sense at all but it's done, so there</p>
<p>(prompts borrowed from <a href="https://a-writing-muse.livejournal.com/1939.html">a-writing-muse on LJ</a>)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>01: tempted</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p><em>Why don’t you go somewhere else, if seeing all our faces hurts you that much?</em> Alfons asks him once, after what felt like the hundredth time he’d forgotten not to blanch on seeing Gracia. <em>And don’t say it doesn’t – god knows you’re no open book but I can read that much just fine, Edward, I’m not an idiot.</em></p>
<p><em>Never thought you were,</em> Ed retorts lightly, and lets Alfons turn away with a huff, lets him assume that Ed simply doesn’t want to answer when the truth is that he <em>can’t</em> (the truth is, it’s not that he’s never been tempted to run; he’s just not strong enough to).</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>02: follow</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Seeing Al’s eyes light the armour had been one thing, but seeing him in person – red cloak and flamel and all – had been something else entirely. Even now Ed doesn’t know what to feel about the fact that Al had been following in his footsteps so closely when he hadn’t remembered the person Ed had become, or the way he still keeps the red cloak folded in his traveling case even now that he <em>does</em> know.</p>
<p>(He’s not the person Al made him out to be, nor the brother Al had forgotten for two years… but then again Ed barely can say who he <em>is</em> sometimes, these days, so maybe that’s just par for the course.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>03: devoted</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Noah helps him go through most of Alfons’ things from around the apartment, but Ed doesn’t get around to their research shelves for the longest time, too tired and wrung-out to even think about sorting his own papers from what remains of Alfons’ work.</p>
<p>It’s only after the funeral that he starts on it, and even then it takes days before three piles form on the table: one on modern developments in physics, another devoted to rocketry, and the last on parallel-world theories.</p>
<p>(He gives the first stack to Al as a way of catching up with the mechanics of this world, the second to Alfons’ colleagues when they drop by several weeks later, and takes a lighter to the last – it goes against everything he’s ever been as an alchemist, as a pursuer of knowledge, but Ed’s never done things halfway and this is no exception.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>04: vanity</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>And – dammit, he’d left his coat in Amestris, hadn’t he, transmuted and squashed under a fuckton of debris in Central? Ugh. He’d <em>liked</em> that coat, and not even a matter of vanity or anything; the weight of it had been reassuringly familiar, and in the comfortable way that hadn’t threatened to trip him up wrong even when he got stuck in his head the way he sometimes did.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>05: bitter</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>If the Gate had really needed another price in the name of equivalency, Ed sometimes finds himself thinking bitterly, maybe it would’ve been better if it’d just taken everyone’s memories of him instead of just stopping at four years of Al’s.</p>
<p>(Of <em>course</em> he would never have wanted his brother to forget him, any more than Ed could ever want to forget Al, which is why he only thinks of it rarely. But would it really have been worse than stranding them both on this world for the rest of their lives, with no way back that they were willing to open?)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>06: weaving</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Al’s memories might mostly be back now, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily has order or context for them, and so Ed once again finds himself recounting the events of those four years (fully and almost honestly this time, not the halfway-editorialised adventures he’d weaved for Alfons).</p>
<p>In return Al tells him about the last two years in Amestris, filtered mostly through second-hand news from the Rockbells, and it… doesn’t really paint a pretty picture at all.</p>
<p>At least they hadn’t sort-of-posthumously promoted Ed two ranks or anything, as far as Al knows, but that’s a pathetically minor consolation in the face of everything else.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>07: distance</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>The shortest distance between two points should always be a straight line. Alchemy is all lines and circles, the rules of plane geometry is half the reason transmutations even <em>work</em> (at least in the other world), and trying to think of anything else is just– gah, this is why Ed <em>hates</em> reading Einstein. Relativity makes his brain <em>hurt</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>08: dismantle</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Now that he has a functional set of automail to study from he <em>really</em> needs to figure out how it works this time, unless he wants to be stuck with Hohenheim’s wind-up contraption forever after this. (Which he doesn’t, for the record, because basically melting your arm off gets old after about the fifteenth time you do it no matter how hysterical the reactions are.)</p>
<p>Despite knowing this, Ed still can’t bring himself to start dismantling the automail until it’s already breaking down from a dozen years of wear and tear, and even then he wishes he had something stronger than double-brewed coffee and a muttered apology to Winry as he reaches for the screwdriver but he <em>needs</em> to be sober for this.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>09: repair</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>The money Hohenheim left for him won’t last forever, not with the continuing post-war inflation and <em>especially</em> not now that Al’s here too, so Ed starts to take up odd jobs in between the search for the uranium bomb.</p>
<p>Writing essays for empty-headed Munich University students turns out to be <em>lucrative as hell</em>, to the point where Ed gets a stitch in his side from laughing at the sheer ludicrousness of it all (and when he eventually quits it’s out of boredom at the assignments, not because he particularly cares about academic integrity in that way).</p>
<p>It takes several more false starts before he finds a happier niche in doing repair work – which should’ve been obvious, in retrospect, because none of the towns they’d passed through had asked the Fullmetal Alchemist to fix anything and yet he’d done it anyway.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>10: rain</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>The colours of this world have always been muted; Ed had thought it was the war, at first, but they’d stayed dull even when the smoke cleared and kept being that way.</p>
<p>But the difference almost washes itself out when it’s raining hard enough. East, Central, London, Munich – all of it fades to blurs of light and city blocks behind the curtain of pounding rain, which is a realisation he really, <em>really</em> could’ve done without.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>11: roam</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>“You used to travel quite a bit, didn’t you?”</p>
<p>Ed has to blink his way back into the present before he can nod. “Yeah, we were always roaming off somewhere – how’d you know?”</p>
<p>Alfons snorts, flicking the dishtowel in his face. “Because you’re <em>not</em> actually crap at doing the chores but you never remember to do them. The dishes won’t dry themselves, Edward.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>12: myth</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Al’s reaction to learning that alchemy amounts to nothing more than unscientific myth in this world is… not that different from when Ed had found out, minus the swearing.</p>
<p>(<em>I mean, I already guessed that much from the first time when I sent my soul over in the armour, but how can it just… not work here?</em> Al had said, bewildered, and – well.</p>
<p>One of these days Ed’s probably gonna have to break the same ugly truth that Hohenheim had told him, about what really powers the alchemy in their world, and he’s not looking forward to it at all.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>13: holy</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Ed hadn’t cared for religion in his old world, and he doesn’t care for it any better here either. After seeing everything the war wrought he can maybe understand people wanting to turn to something greater than themselves, a higher power that could at least pretend to explain the suffering they’re going through, but even then it’s all theoretical – pure rationalisation, nothing he’s ever felt himself.</p>
<p>It’s not until he sees Alfons talking about the rocket, eyes alight as he speaks and speaks and swallows his coughs quiet, that Ed realises gods don’t need to be holy to be believed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>14: time</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Sometimes Ed misses Al even when he’s right there.</p>
<p>Except that’s not quite accurate at all; the one he misses is Al as he’d left behind all that time ago, or Alfons here arguing propulsion fuels over the kitchen table, or the empty room he’d talked alchemical theories to while trying not to hear his own echo.</p>
<p>Perhaps it figured – he’d done that transmutation trying to get his family back, after all, and maybe the price for that was his family as he’d known it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>15: purpose</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Hearing Eckhart’s words up in that rocketship is like having a bucket of icy water thrown right over him. He can’t afford to lose focus from the fight, but the thought plagues him anyway; their purposes are completely different, but hasn’t Ed been treating that world the same way, <em>different</em> and therefore not real to him in some crucial sense?</p>
<p>Alfons had been right – Ed really doesn’t have a right to say anything, about this.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>16: create</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>If Ed is to be honest with himself, he’d known since long ago that rocketry alone wouldn’t be the answer to getting him home. Even the latest technology still had trouble creating something that could break free of Earth’s gravity, let alone through to another dimension entirely.</p>
<p>But he sticks with it anyway because he doesn’t have any better option at this point, and at least it’d brought him to meet this world’s Al so it’s not a complete loss.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>17: guess</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Ed doesn’t have a drinking problem. Oh, he’s got <em>lots</em> of problems, and he drinks sometimes, because who doesn’t, but those two things are – mostly unrelated.</p>
<p>Still he manages to stop completely after Al arrives in this world for good, which he guesses is one inarguably positive thing to come from all of this.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>18: watch</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>“I… found him lying near the controls, soon after you left,” Noah answers when he asks, having made sure to get Al out of earshot first, and Ed can’t bring himself to care that he can still feel her watching him as he shakes apart because this is <em>worse</em> than if Alfons had just gotten caught in some crossfire amidst the chaos. Because this means that it’s <em>his fault</em>.</p>
<p>He’d shut himself in this world in exchange for Al’s life, and to reverse that– hadn’t he been the one who’d wanted to believe in equivalent exchange, after all?</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>19: tomorrow</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Ed’s always been aware that Al was the main reason he’d been able to keep putting up a strong face, keep insisting that they’d find a real clue to the Philosopher’s Stone tomorrow, but it’s not until he gets cast out to this world alone that he realises how much.</p>
<p>Not that it stops him from looking for a way home, because stubborn is the only way Ed knows how to be, but… it’s just harder to <em>believe</em> now. That’s all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>20: cloth</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Someday, they’re going to have lived here longer than they ever did in their old world. It won’t even be that far in the future, and by then even Al will have forgotten the exact way in which cloth woven in Amestris feels softer than the ones made here, or the way alchemy crackles differently from lightning, or the way the Rockbells’ front door always creaked no matter how many times Granny Pinako oiled it.</p>
<p>And sometimes that feels like a defeat, but – they’re alive, they’re together, and that’s already more than he had before. It’ll do.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yeah ed dissed einstein that once and i'm never gonna let him live that down (relativity makes my brain hurt too)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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